I think there are lots of good teams in our resume range. Should be a good tourney and definitely lots of balance. I don't think there will be any 'bad' per se teams in the field.
That being said we need a win or two in the ACC Tourney if we end up .500 in conference. Conference record is not valued as much as people think here especially with unbalanced schedules. Committee members have documented this. Notre Dame will be given a break for games sans Jackson which means our W against them shouldn't be valued as much. Fair and makes sense obviously. We didn't get much done in conference regarding quality wins. Precisely why the debacle on Sat really stings. We have the Duke win which is solid.
Curious what people think about Ohio State. Right now (10-5) they have three games left. MSU twice and Iowa. Let's say they go 1-2. 11-7 in B10. By everyone's conference record logic they should get in but will they? Their conference performance w0uld be similar to ours if they end up 11-7...basically two good wins (one vs Michigan sans LeVert) and a win vs either MSU or Iowa potentially but a bunch of average conference wins. I don't know. I think these are all three difficult games for us coming up. Some work will be need to be done in ACC Tourney to bee safe, regardless.
My assessment has nothing to do with conference record logic.
Even though I constantly repeat 9-9 as the target, it has never been due to the optics about being .500 in the ACC. That is totally irrelevant. I really don't care about any team's conference record in any resume. I have been repeating 9-9 because that was the projected number of wins that gets our RPI down to an acceptable number ( mid 50's to low 60's) for our full resume to get looked at. If we got 8 wins our RPI would be in the 70's.
I believe RPI is a "Look longer at me " number. If you get in the 50's (low 60's) everything will be looked at, and we have some good things on our resume (Namely top 50 wins) Once your RPI is in the 70's less benefit of the doubt may be given (they look for the hole). That is my opinion anyway.
Ohio St --
Not a great chance chance if they go 1-2 the next 3 games. They are 18-10. If they go 1-2, they project to have an RPI in the low 70's as per the table below. That is a number where your negatives may become more important than the positives (and they have one major negative that I am getting to -- and it is a major one).
Even with one win against an elite team, they end up with either a 3-9 or a 4-9 record vs top 50 schools (depending where Michigan ends up). That does not kill you vs other bubble schools - its not great but its respectable..
But this does kill you. Of Ohio St's 18 current wins,
ONLY THREE are against top 100 teams. 15 of 18 wins against sub 100 RPI teams. That is why some AAC teams got punished a few years back.
And it's not just a case of well they have beaten who they played. They haven't. They have 3 bad losses that can't be ignored. 2 were at home, and one was neutral
Now if they can get to 20-11, RPI around 60, 5 top 50 wins. Everything gets a whole lot brighter, I think they key for them is getting 2 more quality wins somehow.
